This invention relates to a heat energy conservation device for use with heating equipment, wherein the heater is ON and doing its heating and then again is OFF because it has done its work. In either case heat loss occurs and it is the minimizing of this heat loss that this invention is directed to. The term heater used herein includes furnaces, hot water boilers, hot water tanks and heating apparatus of various types using gas, oil and other fuels requiring connection to a chimney.
More particularly the present invention relates to a choke in the form of an inverted U, V or L combined with the flue of the heater to form a fluid trap. This trap employed between the flue of the heater and the chimney chokes off hot air emanating from its heat interchange surfaces while in an OFF or non-heating mode to eliminate this large loss of heat energy. Heaters such as these by their very nature and design are both heat absorbers as well as heat exchangers. Their nature does not change when they are changed from an OFF mode where their burner is OFF to an ON mode where their burner is ON or vice versa. They still act as heat exchangers and thereby promptly lose the heat they had gained to return to the ambient temperature of their environment.
One problem with the present flue connections used, which in many cases are mandatory by local laws, is the inclusion of a draft deflector or diverter usually placed at the top of the heater and then piped to the chimney. By virtue of its location, at the top of the heater, it is constantly taking away heated air, lost from heating areas of the heater and also warm room air and delivering it to the chimney and out of the living space, a complete loss and waste of this heat energy. Also by being located at the top of the heater it is drawing room air from a stratum of, warmer than average room air.
The present invention uses the principle of a deflector or so-called draft diverter, to take advantage of its usefulness and compliance to the safety laws but places it to a side of the heater where it can take air from a lower stratum and at a lower temperature, to reduce the thermal loss when evacuating room air. Of greater importance is the fact that the present invention further chokes off the lost hot air of the appliance to slow down the reverse heat transfer of its heating surfaces when the burner is OFF but yet does not impede the flow of hot combustion gasses through to the chimney when the burner is ON. The choking off of hot gasses also gradually lowers the chimney temperature and this then in turn lowers its motivation to draw as strongly as when hotter.
A principle object of this invention is to provide an energy saving attachment for heaters to increase their efficiency. To provide a choke or valve effect between a heater flue and a chimney and which allows free flow of hot gasses through it to the chimney while the heater is ON but which chokes off or checks the flow of hot gasses through it to the chimney when the heater changes to ON to assist in retaining residual heat energy.
Another object is to provide a choke with a diverting or deflecting capability to prevent down or up drafts from the chimney entering the flue of the heater.
A further object is to provide a choke or valve which acts as a heat exchanger to reclaim heat energy from exhaust flue gasses and return that energy back into the heating system.
Still another object is the provision of a choke which is adjustable in its choking effect to fit its degree of choking to the heater that it is used with.
One further object is to provide a choke without moving parts which changes its effect to allow either free flow or the choking of gasses through it.
Another object is to provide a choke responsive to the natural law of gravity using the stratification of heated gas strata, to either restrict, or allow free flow of gasses, through it, a change from one to the other being triggered by the control thermostat of the heater, furnace or other heating apparatus, turning the burner ON.